Tim Peake in numbers

As Tim Peake prepares to return to planet Earth, we take a look at the Sussex spaceman’s interstellar career in numbers.

25 times the speed of sound: The velocity at which Major Peake will plunge back to Earth as he makes his descent from the ISS.

186: The number of days that Tim has spent on the Principia mission.

8,000: The number of applicants that Tim beat to get into space. All of whom had responded to an internet ad from the European Space Agency, saying: ‘Do you want to be an astronaut?’.

Three hours, 35 minutes and 21 seconds: The time it took Tim to run the 2016 London Marathon’s 26.2 miles on a treadmill aboard the International Space Station. This saw him become the first ever man to run a marathon in space.

8: When he headed skyward back in December, Tim became the eighth Briton to go into space.

1,672,203: The number of social media followers Tim has across Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Instagram.

$150bn: The cost of the International Space Station. Travelling at an average speed of 17,100 mph, Tim has called the ISS home for the past six months.

2,500 degrees C: The expected temperature surrounding Tim’s craft as he returns home. This is caused by the dissociation of atmospheric molecules and the ionisation of their atoms, which then engulf the vehicle in ultra-hot plasma.

250: The number of experiments that Major Peake has carried out on mission, specialising in the fields of medical science, radiation physics and materials.

2006: The year in which Tim received a Bachelor of Science degree in flight dynamics and evaluation from the University of Portsmouth.

Don’t miss out on all the latest breaking news where you live.

Here are four ways you can be sure you’ll be amongst the first to know what’s going on.